Underground Voices started as an online literary magazine showcasing writing that was hard-hitting and raw. I didn’t see any magazine that embraced that style of fiction and poetry so I wanted to fill the gap and offer a platform to those kinds of writers: a space where their work could be seen and read. I love books, though, so I slowly moved Underground Voices in the direction of a small press: first publishing annual short story collections and finally publishing novels, which is where it’s at now.

We offer a vehicle where contemporary literature can travel. We are invested in fostering a community of readers and writers passionate about words and language, regardless of where they live.

We publish books in English and Spanish and translations into English from Spanish and Portuguese. These languages represent the connections the founders have with their cultures and languages of origin, as well as languages and literatures we are familiar with and want to share with a wide readership.

On a daily basis, we’re inspired and influenced by every other indie press around: it’s a lot of hard work to run a press—often thrilling, but frequently full of difficult and thankless tasks—and I admire everyone who is doing this, who is giving of themselves to help facilitate the continuation of independent literature, all the other editors and publishers working hard to bring new books out into the world.

The mission of HP is honoring lesbian existence, discovering a range of lesbian voices and promoting lesbian representation in the arts. As far as we know, there is no other press with this singular mission. We want to bring lesbian poets of all ages and backgrounds into the fold of publishing and create a market for lesbian-identified poetry.

The mission is embodied in our tagline: “Publishing the Best Literature of the American Jewish Experience.” We’ve attempted to take the best practices observed throughout the book-publishing business and adapt them to our particular style. We only publish a small number of books so we’re highly selective in our acquisitions. We’re looking for manuscripts that tell a story (whether via fiction or non-fiction) in a compelling, unique way that all readers will learn from and enjoy.

The name Blood Pudding Press derived from me not being a fan of a certain style of light-hearted, comedic, semi-clichéd poetry, which seemed akin to vanilla snack pack pudding to me. I prefer more bloody, visceral, emotional, challenging, unique, quirky, non-mainstream, abstract artsy poetry, even if such styles are inedible to some.

Our mission is to publish literary fiction and nonfiction at the intersection of the arts and sciences because we believe that science and the humanities are natural companions for understanding the human experience. Our aesthetic is revealed through our books, and our influences are the totality of our experience as students and passionate readers of literary writing.

The idea of bringing out the innovative, risk-taking work by women being turned down by editors at male-dominated presses grew, in part, out of the Coop experience. Virtually every literary press in the country in 1974 was run by men, one notable exception being Alice James Books, a feminist press formed on the east coast a year earlier.

Our mission is to hand creative control back to the creative. The thing I’ve always loved about this company is that we’re working for the authors, artists and readers. We’re not a big corporate juggernaut answering to a bottom line, but two guys answering to our own hearts about what art really should be.

I think more than anything else, we’re driving by the rather old-fashioned concept now that ideas matter. And that engagement with ideas ought to be rewarding, energizing, entertaining, inspirational, reflective and productive. So I guess our mission is the production and dissemination of such ideas. Politically, we definitely come from (and are hopefully contributing to in some modest fashion) the traditions and practices of anarchism, Marxism, and the wide, wild and messy spectrum of anti-authoritarian philosophy, art, culture and history.

The Grind Daily Writing Series is never far from my experience of Bull City Press: the invitation to pursue hard, solitary work, and not alone, but with other like-minded writers. For me this pervades the Bull City ethos… hard working writers celebrating the work of other hard working writers. That is the vision Bull City has of a community—to connect writers with writers as well as readers, to foster & challenge writers, and to celebrate/broadcast writers’ accomplishments.

Timeless, Infinite Light is an Oakland-based small press that publishes contemporary writing with a tendency toward the experimental, radical, and mystical. We are committed to promoting critical poetic work by emerging and established writers, and we prioritize authors whose identities are often excluded from the literary mainstream. We believe in the radical potential of collaborative, hybrid, and embodied writing, and promote work that resists structures of oppression, both in form and content.

Our mission is to reduce racism, sexism, phobia, inequality, and ignorance by publishing impressive work from a diverse group of people, hopefully in an entertaining way but without shying away from topics that may be uncomfortable. We also want to improve the business of publishing. This mission seems even more important today.